Residential projects in Haddon Heights attest to the White Horse Pike’s evolution

Haddon Heights is one of 18 towns along the 58-mile length of the White Horse Pike between Camden and Atlantic City.

But Heights doesn’t regard itself as just another Pike community, and it doesn’t regard the Pike as just another road.

The path the Pike takes through the borough was a boulevard of impressive homes and officially called Fifth Avenue before the 1920s, when what is also known as N.J. Route 30 was completed.

Heights has been concerned about its de facto main street ever since. Lately, it looks as if the Pike’s history as a desirable place not just to do business, but to live, may be repeating itself.

Four residential developments will add about 60 apartments along four blocks of the White Horse Pike’s west side in Haddon Heights, all within easy walking distance of the borough’s Station Avenue business district.

“I don’t think these developments are a coincidence,” said Margaret Westfield, who with her husband, Michael, resides and maintains an architectural practice on the Pike. “The Pike developed as a residential street and is returning to a residential street in large part because of the change in our society now, with people working from home and telecommuting.”

Other forces also are at work. The aging of the traditional churchgoing population has left modest-sized congregations like St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Haddon Heights with too few people in the pews and too much real estate.

So construction of a four-story, 36-unit senior citizen residence on the rear portion of the church property on the Pike at Green Street will enable the church to downsize — while preserving the heart of St. Mary’s, said Archdeacon Lynn H. Johnson, pastor of the church.

Another of the four residential projects involves tearing down a century-old former butcher shop on Station Avenue at the Pike to create a mixed-use building with retail on the ground floor and a dozen apartments above.

Two other developers separately have repurposed or will repurpose long-vacant houses on the Pike at High and Haddon Streets for a total of 10 apartments. New construction at Haddon and the Pike is yielding another three rental units.

“There’s less of a need for the office spaces that the revitalization of the Pike in the last 30 years generated,” Westfield said.

A descendant of one of the founding families of what is now Haddon Heights, Benjamin A. Lippincott began to develop his land holdings after regular passenger rail service to Camden began in 1877. Expansion of commuter service in 1889 and the addition of a trolley line along Atlantic Avenue in 1903 also spurred residential development.

By the mid-1960s, after commuter rail service ended, small apartment buildings and complexes replaced some of the single-family homes. Other large residences were converted into professional offices as traffic on the Pike increased to its current level of about 20,000 vehicles per day.

The Pike also drew interest from developers such as Alfred DeMartini, who envisioned adding stores and apartments near a Penn Fruit Co. supermarket on the Pike near the borough’s boundary with Barrington.

“My dad was thankful for those who took the effort to make sure [parts of the borough] remained unique and special,” said Paul DeMartini, whose father built the three midcentury modern apartment buildings that still grace the 400 block.

“Unfortunately, he put the parking out front of the buildings, which was typical of that time,” said Paul DeMartini.

Although the family no longer owns the three buildings, Paul DeMartini renovated a vacant house on the Pike at Haddon Street into four apartments. He also constructed a separate adjacent building with three additional rental units there.

“The Pike is evolving toward more residential,” he said. “But it has to be done well.”

Other stakeholders in the Camden County borough of 7,500 said the rise in residential development on and near the Pike reflects not only current housing market trends, but a half-century’s worth of historic preservation efforts.

Haddon Heights approved its first historic preservation ordinance in 1974. But demolition of a beloved house at 6 White Horse Pike a decade later, and its replacement by an office building designed to appear residential, led to a public outcry.

In 1984 the borough council approved an ordinance to create a Historic Preservation Commission to oversee historic districts and provide guidelines related to demolition, renovation, and construction within them.

“It wasn’t so much to maintain the residential character as the architectural character,” said Rosemary Fitzgerald, then a leader of the Haddon Heights Heritage League and now a retired legal secretary.

“There’s a [visual] rhythm of the Pike,” she said. “Starting at the unit block there’s a progression of architectural styles such as Victorian, shingle-style, bungalows, and American four-squares.”

Ted Nickles, the longtime owner of a historic preservation and restoration business in the borough, said, “The properties protected by the historic preservation ordinance have generally kept their appearance. By and large, the ordinance has saved that stretch of the Pike so it can look like what it ought to look like.”

The pastor of St. Mary’s since 2020, Johnson arrived as the sale of the property was already a work in progress. The agreement with 14 White Horse Pike LLC, of which PRD Management is the principal, involves a sale and leaseback of the property.

PRD manages the Stanfill Towers senior building a block from the church. The company’s portfolio also includes other South Jersey senior complexes — including the three midcentury Pike buildings constructed by Alfred DeMartini and now collectively called Stanfill Commons.

Johnson said the new incarnation of St. Mary’s will bolster the congregation and community alike. The pipe organ will be saved, as will the stained-glass windows throughout the current campus — although there will not be enough window spaces for them all. The memorial garden also will be preserved.

“We have 30 families on the rolls, less than half of what we once had, and three buildings — the rectory, the school, and the church — are no longer sized appropriately for us,” Johnson said. “PRD will lease the building back to us, but they will handle the repairs and the maintenance, which had been such a drain for so many years.

“So there’s excitement because people in the church are looking forward to something better.”

“These two houses were built circa 1912 and 1914,” said Chris Mrozinski, developer of the former Jefferson Bank property at High Street and the Pike. He plans to return the houses to residential use, with two apartments in each, including a two-level space on the second and third floor and a ground-level apartment in the 1980s-style connector building between the two.

One of a number of other adjacent houses with connector buildings on the Pike, the bank property has been vacant for about 15 years.

”It’s exciting to bring this property back to life,” Mrozinski said.